Aucanquilcha

Region II, Chile

This is an extremely tough road to try and climb up on a bike. The terrible surface and steep gradients meant that with loaded bikes we had to push about 80% of the way from 4,000m to a high point at 5,130m. The old mine road used to run to the top of Aucanquilcha (6,176m), but now much of it above 5,500m has been wiped out by landslides.

Although a number of people have taken their bikes to the summit, we left our at 5,130m (and went on foot from there to the summit) as above this the surface on many stretches of the road is so bad that we thought we wouldn’t be able to ride it in either direction. However, there are sections of rideable road all the way to the summit. On the summit itself it would also be possible to ride around a bit.